The story takes place in an era similar to that of ancient Rome in a country called Chronos. It follows a group known as the Temple Mercenaries. In particular, the manhwa is about Ares, Michael and Baroona, three young warriors with mysterious pasts and surpassing skills...

The manhwa is notable for its subtle use of anachronistic elements (Ares' shoes are similar to that of classic Adidas), as well as very dynamic and fluid action sequences.

avg..... well better than avg.... pretty nice.... artwork lookz like done not with a computer.... so its kinda like those from the 90s.... anyways the thing that sucks most is the the scannin group = a bunch of slow moles..... all of the manga they scan r slow as hell...

There are some good action/fight scenes and its a pretty good read, but lacks in many aspects. Occasionally, its difficult to make out who's who, as some of the characters look similar or the perspective of the drawing makes it difficult to tell the difference. The weakest part of the manhwa is the dialog, which comes off as unnatural and flat most of the time.

I don't get it....why do people like this manga? Why is it rated so high? I don't like the art...it's more like doodle. I can't even tell the characters apart. Also the characters seem more android than human, no feeling.....and of course....what's up with the plot? It's like...wth?!?!

I read all the chapter until the end, and sadly I have to give it 3/10

I read many different kind of manga , and Ares definitely falls into the category of dark medieval fantasy genre. First thing, if you want to read a really good dark medieval story , read : Berserk, Vinland Saga, and Historie . That's some perfect example of how a really gritty dark medieval manga should be written and drawn. When I read this manga , it has :

1. Bad dialogue I don't know why, but the dialogue in this manga is just plain shallow and weak. There are so many conversation that is just waste of space, not giving any useful information, and just plain nothing.

2. Bad artworkThis is why I mostly don't like korean manga. The art sucks ass , I am having hard time to differentiate face in between the character. The mangaka is a fucking lazy, and doesn't spend time on drawing character. Especially if you really looking at the war section. There are so many characters that look exactly the same, you cannot tell which one is A , which one is B.

3. Bad fighting sceneThe way the fight scene drawn, was kinda confused me too. I cannot make sense when I tried to read between first column, and the next column. The fighting scene doesn't seems to be in cohesion together. I didnt understand if this particular character getting stab or slash from vertical or horizontal , or diagonal. There's also lack of "death face" of the character that got killed , the mangaka solved the problem by just drawing every grunt with full helmet so he can have the excuse to not draw the agony face. And really, it kills the hype. I never really get immersed with ANY battle scene throughout the story.

4. The mangaka tried so hard to make the characters to be cool, but failed hard , because apparently the characters cannot look cool without smoking or atleast have something to suck in between their lips.

This is seriously pisses me off, people are really smoking while in they are in the war killing people? Even in one battle scene, there was this character that tried so hard to be cool by picking up his "cigarette" even though he was in the bad situation? give me a break. There are a lot of way to make character cool, and the worst way to do it was by giving the character "cigarette" to make them cool. It really ticked me off because the credibility of the character just went down dramatically because of this shit. From war veteran persona to become high school delinquent persona.SPOILER SECTIONS HERE, BEWARE:5. Weak ass plot, the mangaka made the plot as it goes .There is no really good plot in this manga, everything is predictable. Even the main antagonist ( Michael ) had a weak motivation as to why he went in the killing rampage , and it never really gets explained until the end. Yes, he protected Ares , but why killed all the citizen and used his soldier very inhumanly? What made Michael went a drastic change of his character from being neutral evil, to chaotic evil? there was no any single explanation to that. The mangaka just wanted the plot to go that way without proper planning what kind of background motivation to make Michael to do what he did after he left Temple Merchenary. After that, the story went downhill to the battle of attrition without any good motive than just : I want to rule the world. Its just plain weak , dear korean mangaka. 6. Naive, gullible protagonist Not that I hate naive character like Ares. But in this particular case, this is how you make a BAD naive protagonist. Ares is just plain shallow, there is nothing memorable about this character. Even in the last two battles , he is still being a pacifist idiot when he supposed to be taking his revenge against his nation, his people, and his master. There's too much misguided chivalry being committed by this character. it really getting into my nerves. I do understand the question: why do I kept reading this manga even though I said it was bad? Well, its like watching bad soap opera drama, you hate it but at the same time you want to know the ending, so I kept reading it while still being pissed off just so I can get done with it , know the ending, and not looking / reading this manga ever again. In conclusion, do not read this manga.

I have no idea why this manhwa is as popular as it is. I read it up to and including v16, hoping for it to get better, but instead it got worse, and I finally stopped at that point. The manhwa is supposed to be about war - imagine a less dark Berserk without the supernatural (which is both okay) but also without anything making sense (which is bad).Among the many faults of this manhwa are:- bad/inconsistent art - there are some good moments, but most of it is at most mediocre- impossible/fantasy physics - there's no magic in this manhwa, yet Baroona has a weapon that cannot, would not ever work; many jumping acrobatics are similarly stupid, too- military "tactics" - this is a story about a number of countries continually at war with each other, yet none of their bloddy tactics make sense whatsoever- similarly, several huge battles start with commanders of both sides asking to "let our strongest soldiers fight" in a duel - _why_ make a manhwa about war if you make armies meaningless?- and yet again, _why_ make a manhwa about war and big battles if there are one-man armies?- action sequences not involving the main characters are all uninteresting, pointless filler- immature, stupid side characters - essentially, all normal male soldiers in this story will boast constantly and start fights whenever a chance presents itself; none of them seems to have ever heard of military discipline or human decency- again, why put magic battle pills in a manhwa that was, up to that point, "realistic", i.e. featured no magic?

And a few bigger issues:

Spoiler (mouse over to view)

- The whole girlfriend dynamic is incredibly juvenile. In one part, Ares brings his girlfriend _with him_ during a siege...wtf? But more importantly, while Ares usually just kills everybody he fights with, he decides to spare someone for the arbitrary reason of them being both strong and having a girlfriend, too. Hint: Most of the other people you killed, Ares, would have had similar backstories if the author had bothered writing them. Ares has totally inconsistent morals due to things like this.- inconsistent characterizations: Mikael makes no sense as a character: If he is there just to learn about Chronos and to invade it in the future, why make friends there? That's absurd.- Chronos "patriotism": There are several countries in the world of Ares, but we are somehow supposed to be happy when Chronos wins, and sad if Chronos loses. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to care about Chronos specifically, other than that it's the main character's homeland.- My most important criticism: After Mikael betrays Ares, the author _HAD_ to invent a magic reason for Ares not to die. That was the point at which I decided the story was dead to me: Mikael defeats Ares (in a prolonged and nonsensical sequence), then listens to some of his subordinates who suggest to "feed him to the birds". And then Ares gets saved by the weakest mercenary in existence who only seems to exist in the whole manhwa for this specific event...

The only decent character (Hell hes above decent he's f-ing awesome is Kiron who is Ares's dead master. Its also has an incredible impact when Kiron as accomplished as he is states that his life's mission was to put a sword in the hand of Ares. Ares himself is annoying and has one eyeball which is a constant reminder as to how unrealistic this manga this sometimes is. Depth perception is important damn it, its not something you can overcome with skill and willpower. Better than most but thats not saying much when it comes to manga. I've waded through to the letter N on onemanga and there are many mangas better than this one. If it wasn't for kirus kiron and michael this manga would get a 7.

As a sidenote I think many people say that ares is the best shonen manga out there because when they start experimenting with other mangas (besides bleach and naruto even though I think naruto is better than this manga. Bleach sucks period. If you think bleach is the best then you're only paying attention to artwork and tite kubo's fashion sense and his fame is as ridiculous as Picasso's and that Asian singer from American idol) they start with A and with such a tiny range of samples come to the conclusion that it is the best shonen manga out there. It isn't. Its good but it isn't the best to name a few others that are better there is vagabond, hajime no ippo (the best manga ever), majin tentei nougami neuro(debatable for this one), Biomega (a kickass manga that steadily gets weirder. Best action stunts I have ever seen). Those are the ones I can think of off of the top of my head anyways.

The story seems so great at first. But it became confusing in the later chapter, i can't seem to recognize characters, especially with that kind of weird lousy arts (most of the characters have that "boring" look in their faces).

TaoPaiPai said it well. I have to give it some points for starting okay, but after that everything really just goes down hill, fast. I am very confused by people giving this 10s, and saying the art is great... what? What is great about the art? Is it because you can usually tell that a person is being drawn, simply because sometimes you can make the arms and legs out? Is that what makes this art something wonderful?

One more thing, for people who think it is really -just- the art that makes people label this as crap: You had to read far into it, and possibly several times.. a ~little~ bit of understanding of the human mind would explain why this crap starts looking good. It is the same reason that listening to a really really horribly offensive, in all ways, song it will start to sound good if you listen to it often enough. Something like 10 times and the song will start to sound good.The same with really bad smells, if you are stuck in them your body will adjust so you don't smell it anymore, or so it doesn't smell bad to you. Hence, this is crap. You forced yourself to trudge through this crap more than a normal person would. You were rewarded by your mind adjusting to the crap in such a way that the art might seem good to you now, or the convulted story might make as much sense as a twisted picture. Good job masochists. ^_^ This is for people slamming the negative reviews, thinking that people who don't like this series assume we are brain dead bafoons who only saw the cover and never attempted to actually read this stupid thing.Look at the guy down a few posts who mistook a panda for a skull, but still gave a 10. Come on!

Anyways, besides the absolutely horrible art, and the fact that all the characters have the same look on their face of "Hrm, well, today happened... yup" and the art making it so you can't really tell to many characters apart, add in the fact that so many characters are introduced that look the same, and it becomes one big mess of characters and talk. Eventually it breaks down to just looking at the pictures and trying to make up a story to go along with it, because the story itself is so inane.So yeah, art = bad. Story = confused and annoying. Characters = Characters, where? Overall = Find something else to occupy your time. After the first little bit of "this could be interesting" it swiftly turns into a giant mess that makes the Gordian Knot look like child's play.